There is always a "hottest startup" in tech and in most cases the level of heat is almost inversely proportional to likelihood of lasting success.

Avoiding a dramatic flameout is Job #1 for the young company. My bet is that five years from now, most users will think of Dropbox only in the context of "Whatever happened to?"

Update: I have posted a follow-up that answers some of the questions and comments about this article.

Forbes' Victoria Barret has written a wonderful insider piece about Dropbox that you can read here. She describes an early meeting between Dropbox founder Drew Houston and Apple's Steve Jobs.

Jobs smiled warmly as he told them he was going after their market. “He said we were a feature, not a product,” says Houston.

Steve was right. Houston's job -- along with his partner Arash Ferdowski -- is to prove Steve Jobs wrong, but it won't be easy and few have succeeded.

Over the years, I've seen dozens, probably hundreds, of product demonstrations where I told a hopeful entrepreneur they were showing me a feature and not a product. I can't remember a single one that survived intact.

Most ended up being purchased and rolled into something else (as Jobs tried to do with Dropbox) while others just disappeared. Longterm, I don't see Dropbox surviving as a standalone company, though its founders may get very rich in the meantime.

What's the difference between feature and product?

A feature is something that really belongs or can easily be built into something that already exists. For example, iCloud, essentially Steve Jobs' version of Dropbox, is integrated with the operating system and applications on Apple devices and works with Windows as well.

An application goes further and presents a convincing argument that it needs to stand alone. This is especially difficult if users are asked to pay for it separately, as heavy Dropbox users are.

To Dropbox's credit, they have done an excellent job of building their feature. It works great, I use it daily, but I am using a free account (you can get one, too) and probably wouldn't pay for it.